Drabblelicious
by trismegistus1
Summary: A series of drabbles written for the x_men100 livejournal community. More to come as they get written.
1. Cyclopean

Somebody always asked the damn question.  
  
Every time he welcomed new students to Xavier's, some smart-ass punk who thought he had a sense of humor would ask. Occasionally it was the genuinely interested, someone whose natural curiosity led to the inevitable question when faced with his peculiar mutation.  
  
He had to admit, he saw where they were coming from. Some had wings, some had fur, he had his--eccentricity. He might ask himself, if it were him.  
  
Still, it didn't make answering the damn question any less tedious.  
  
"No Franklin," Scott said wearily, "I don't actually have just one eye." 


	2. Sanctuary

He thought it would be easier than this.  
  
He thought it would be just like walking out the last time, thought that he had been rendered insensate to the look about his former lover. There was no room for pity nor affection in Magneto's heart; unefficient emotions, those things, unable to inspire great deeds or urge great men to transcendence. Erik was if nothing else efficient, and ruthless, and till now had considered himself cold to boot.  
  
But now, with Charles before him helpless and unguarded, still in the thrall of some monster that barely clung to life, he felt...something stir within him. Not quite pity, no, nor affection; Erik had long ago given up on feeling such things for Charles, emotions stunted by those weekly 'visits' and the unfailing sympathy of this _man_ for those who had ensnared him, who had been closer than any brother, had Charles never known what captivity was like, had he never known was it was to want _someone_ to come and _save_ him, pride and dignity be damned, if only to save each other--  
  
Erik shook his head and rose from his reverie. The walls of the room around them had already begun to hemorrhage water, and the room's metal infrastructure was only maintaining its integrity at his coaxing. There was no time for dithering.  
  
He gestured at the moribund abomination behind him. Mystique needed no words; they had their own brand of telepathy, after all these years of working together and planning together and fucking together. She slit the boy's throat with a smooth, fluid motion of her hands.  
  
Charles blinked his eyes. As the lifeblood pooled out of the boy's neck, his hold over Charles buckled and snapped. Charles lifted the makeshift Cerebro helmet off his head and wheeled himself about; he had always had to crane his neck up to look at Erik, from his disadvantaged position. Something about that had always struck Erik as right.  
  
"What...Erik, what's going on?" He took in the room, the wasted corpse leaking its fluid bile over itself, Mystique with blood on her hands and satisfaction written along the planes of her face.  
  
Erik nodded slow and deep at his former lover. "Come, Charles," he said, gripping the wheels of Charles' chair in a magnetic vice. "We have much to discuss, old--friend." 


	3. Valse

He doesn't do it often, but sometimes, instead of sleeping, he'll stay up till the advent of the dawn watching the colors sweep across the schoolgrounds.  
  
Tonight, he's caught up in the gloaming purples and twilight hues, staring in rapt fascination as they saturate the trees outside his office. He's got his hands pressed together like a penitent kneeling at mass, and he thinks that, in a sense, yes, that must be right. Heresey like what he and his have wrought demands penance, and perhaps he may one day hear the notes of absolution sounded around him.  
  
He cocks his head as something creeps onto the borders of his awareness. There's residue here, an echo of a thing, a sort of stain that's lingering on the fringes of his senses. Without doing anything so bold as turning to face her, he acknowledges her. Inclines his head, just so she knows he's waiting.  
  
"The valse," she begins, and he can hear the scritch of music scraping along the insides of his ears, the three-fourths cadence bucking gently under his feet, "originated in Germany. A courtly dance, an expression of affinity and respect between equals. The woman leads the man as much as he thinks he does her."  
  
He can feel her approach him more than he can hear her. She brings one arm about in a lazy circle, hooking his head in the crook of her elbow, and she leans around and pushes him gently down into his chair.  
  
He isn't sure, but he thinks that he smiles into the fall of her hair. The light refracts purple in the crystals of her eyes. "And are you planning on teaching me to dance, Emma?"  
  
And her lips curl around his name, and he can hear her press the sounds of him against the roof of her mouth, and he has to pause and remember that she's not really here, that the crystalline perfection of her is laid out shattered several hundred yards below him. "Charles," she says to him in the spaces of his mind, "you and I have been dancing all this time." 


	4. Klatch

The last things she remembers are water, pressure, air fleeing her lungs like light at sunset--  
  
And then she's not drowning, she's seated in a café with a table of women.  
  
"It's your first time?" one asks, her but not, an "X" over her heart and birds of prey in her eyes.  
  
"'Course it is," another one says, her but not, years younger and hoops in her ears. "See? Shocked silent."  
  
"Where am I?" she manages to ask.  
  
"You," the third one says--not her, there's Scott in her eyes too, "are in for one heck of a secret." 


	5. Hot In Herre

"How long d'you think the air conditioning's going to be broken?"  
  
"I don't know, John."  
  
"You'd think that a school run by somebody as ass-rich as Xavier would have some decent upkeep."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"But if you could just control your powers and whip up a nice snow drift--"  
  
"Go to sleep, John."  
  
"...iI was like good gracious, ass-bodacious.../i"  
  
"...Are you singing 'Hot In Herre'?"  
  
"Yeah, s'been stuck in my head forever. Kind of apro since it's so damn hot in here."  
  
"...John, quit it."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Quit making it hotter in here. I'm not taking off my clothes."  
  
"Aww, Bobby..." 


	6. Left Behind and Forgotten

iLeft Behind and Forgotten/i  
  
When he took John in, Erik knew he'd be dealing with the foibles, quirks and peccadilloes of a boy who hadn't started grade school when communism fell. Youth was confusing and turbulent, and men of Erik's generation were better off not involving themselves in the emotional workings of boys John's age.  
  
But now, watching John fume after a particularly nasty telephone exchange with his former friends at Xavier's School for the Perpetually Sedated, Erik knew he had to ask.  
  
"Just what /i you doing?"  
  
John's eyes were solemn as he shook the pickle jar. "My friends need to be punished." 


	7. Sibling Rivalry

Ronnie didn't mean for it to happen. That was important, in his mind.  
  
No matter what, Bobby was his older brother, and older brothers occupied a powerful fierce place in a young man's life. He respected Bobby, trusted Bobby, learned from him as was the natural order of things.  
  
Then Bobby brought those--that man who came back from the dead and the boy who threw fire like javelins and the girl, what the fuck did she _do_? She stopped the firewalker cold, and Ronnie knew he didn't want to mess with somebody who could shut someone like him down so easily.  
  
And Bobby, all the while acting like he belonged to them, like he was one of them, like they were his family--  
  
Dammit. He was getting worked up again.  
  
Fucking Bobby, Ronnie thought as he urged the angry red stripes to fade from his skin. He just had to get the cooler mutation. 


End file.
